I am creating my own topic of discourse here, not fully thought out but yet still developing through this narrative. In a very loose way – I am working through my own infatuations through this production.
I am centering this discussion around mostly around the concept of memory and to a lesser extent, around the notion of change. I am will be looking at two pages in the novel for this short paper, specific pages 223 and 224. I may bring in a third element into this discussion but I would like to keep it more on the periphery of the explicative, and that is the element of nature - as in pastoral nature.
On page 223, Fanny, while sitting with Mary Crawford, states, “This is pretty - very pretty,’ said Fanny, looking around her as they were thus sitting together one day: “Every time I come into the shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never thought of as any thing, or capable of becoming any thing; and now it is converted into a walk, and it would be difficult to say whether most valuable as a convenience or an ornament; and perhaps in another three years we may be forgetting - almost forgetting what it was before” (223). There are two important issues of note here, first of which relates to the character of Mary Crawford and the second of which is more relevant to what Fanny is suggesting.
At the end of this passage, which contains a very highly analyzed viewpoint of the concept of human memory, we are left with this from the narrator, “Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and Fanny perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought must interest.” Though I should complete Fanny’s narrative here before expounding on Mary’s inability to grasp the beginning or the end of Fanny’s discourse on nature, transformation and memory – we can still summarize Mary Crawford here very easily because she is shrugged off very easily here. Though Mary is presented as having a lively mind or at least a lively personality with some quality of depth, this passage and in this page, Mary’s is presented as anything but a lively mind. As this page pertains to Marry Crawford, it is one of the most damaging and negating portrayals of Mary Crawford and her lively mind. In this one scene, one can possibly forgive Mary for possibly being distracted by thoughts of Edmund and one can also state that Fanny wants to speak about anything but Edmund with Mary Crawford, but, one cannot negate that that this statement, Mary’s untouched nature or inattentiveness when it comes to matters of metaphysical depth, is a recrimination of Mary as it is a vindication of Fanny elevated status in the novel. I hope to show this more as I continue on the larger discussion about memory and creation.
Fanny, uses nature as an entry into a further exploration of the miracle that is memory. Again, in the description of the pastoral nature in which she sits in, she continues, “. . .and perhaps in another there years we may be forgetting - almost forgetting what it was before.” There is a key element of time working here and how it relates with the forgotten and the re-created, which I will not be able to get to here, but it can be seen in other places in the novel, as Edmund asks Fanny to give Harry Crawford time, because things can change, realties, identities and impressions are always under the changing pressure of time. In this scene, the shrubbery has changed and growth has occurred over the passage of time, which is nothing more than a physical outcome of time. It is an outcome of linearity as nothing status static. Thus, through the very simple element of shrubbery, Fanny expounds on elements of truth that are more eternal, more metaphysical and thus more transcendental.
Lets complete the sentence now, “Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never thought of as any thing, or capable of becoming anything; and almost in perhaps, in another three years we may be forgetting - almost forgetting operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!”. In a novel apparently so devoid of the metaphysical element, this passage that stand out even more so because the regular narrative and thematic element is broken with authoritative force. When one completes this sentence, one realizes that Fanny is not talking about nature, she is talking about the art of remembering and forgetting in a supposedly linear time element. The static thus becomes relative through the art of memory and she is talking now about the “operations of time”.
Remembering and forgetting are operations of memory and memory is the nature of time, it is what categorizes our past and what also creates our present. This is something Fanny struggles with later on in the novel with her refusal of Mr. Crawford – there is memory that cannot be forgotten and it is what determines here reality with Mr. Crawford. This element of metaphysical is something she can explain but it is something she, herself cannot exist in, as the shrubbery, later on in the novel. More importantly, she is thus taken out of the natural pastoral and remains stuck in the very thing she can only explain.
Stepping back from this for a moment, one can also see some other aspects that remain very true to the notion of identity. Here, we see that she is also understand that the operations of time, her words, function on what one remembers and what one forgets. In a larger context, for example, if the work is taken as a migrant narrative, what one wants to remember is what one keeps of one’s former identity from a different time period and geographical location. It is part of the migrant process of transformation. Second, if shows how relative notions of inheritance really are, as metaphysical inheritance becomes “an operation of the mind”, a choice if you will given to us by memory, because memory if you will, is what one chooses to remember and what one chooses to forget – inheritance. Third, this in direct relation to transcendence, in that one may rise above the past and thus create a new present or even future, through memory.
In other words like Corrine, or Italy, this passage leaves open the element of choice. You choose to be either Oswald or you choose to be Corrine. Memory is one of direct controls of a present reality and I do not believe Fanny just happened to stumble onto this – I believe Jane Austin’s simple novel about duty and marriage is highly complex novel about the metaphysical nature of identity and reality.
This is further brought out in this passage when one looks at the juxtaposition that is created by Fanny and Marry Crawford. Fanny states, again in the presence of Mary Crawford, as “Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and Fanny perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought must interest.” Fanny takes an elevated status in the passage, as it is her mind that needs to be brought back from this metaphysical state discourses through, to a state that is more easily accessible for Mary Crawford. The narrative is “brought back” to the discourse of the marriage and duty, on purpose, for the benefit of Mary Crawford. Thus, at the very least, can we say the author knows more than what she is leading on to, that the novel stands in moment of transcendence that on purpose brought back for those characters so embedded in what is the community of Mansfield Park.
Fanny or Austin though, is not done;
“;and perhaps in another there years we may be forgetting - almost forgetting what it was before. How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!’ And following the latter train of thought, she soon afterwards added: If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speaking incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is something so retentive: so serviceable, so obedient - at others, so bewildered and so weak - and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! - We are to be sure a miracle every way - but our powers of recollection and of forgetting do seem peculiar past find out.” (And then the next sentence) “Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing say; and Fanny, perceiving it, brought back her own to what she thought must interest.”
Before we move on to Fanny’s passage about memory, I would like to make a slight defense of Miss Crawford but only in relation to the other woman in the book. There are moments where Miss Crawford appears very conscious about all the interacting “games” being played throughout the novel. This makes her seem more enlightened than the other female characters in the novel, but as this passage so poignantly points out, Miss Crawford is presented as nothing more than “spectator” while one of the key passages in the novel is played out. In the spectrum of female characters inside Mansfield Park, Lady Bertram, Mrs. Rushworth, Mrs. Norris, Julia B, Maria B Miss Crawford and Fanny, the spectrum is obviously slanted to one side. If we were to put Fanny on the right side of this spectrum, the left side would be so heavily weighed in density that when a character such as Lady Crawford is looked at, the imbalance created with in the spectrum unduly moves Miss Crawford too much towards Fanny. The left side is so far left, that Miss Crawford actually appears to be more in the middle but only because the left side, with Mrs. Norris, Lady Bertram and the sisters is – so unconscious, so un-metaphysical and so external that Miss Crawford is the next character before Fanny to the right. Miss Crawford does have a conscious awareness of that “desirous mind” – that lively mind and this can be seen in the great leeway that she gives her brother and his dealings with woman throughout the novel. She takes his behavior for granted and without drawing any judgments on him, except in his later interactions with Fanny, this becomes one of her key attributes. However, in her interaction with Fanny here, her apparent lack of interest and insight here makes her look more like a normal knife filled in cupboard with even more dull ones.
In the larger picture, the distance between Fanny and the other characters in the novel, only adds greater weight to Fanny’s discourse and this can be seen through the juxtaposition and distance between these two characters. Fanny describes of memory as one faculty in our nature more “wonderful than the rest”. There is something “speaking incomprehensible about it powers”. One needs to stop here for a moment and realize that this is the few place in the novel, where the thematic elements of the narrative falls out of normal narrative and thematic structure. Its poignancy is through its rarity in the work and along with a few other instances in the novel, leads me to believe that we delve into an almost magical place of “creation” in the novel, a creation that can be seen through two or three passages about nature, the magical suspension of belief in the play almost enacted and passages like the one being analyzed - which deals with the metaphysical element of memory.
Memory in this passage is grounded through nature and thus grounded in reality, the physical, that which is real; trees, shrubs, evergreens and those things that “grow”. Thus, memory is a real element that grows as well, but it is it as organic as the elements it is presented compared to? The answer is both yes and no. It is organic in that it is continues to change, it continues to evolve like the nature it is compared to. Through memory one can become transcendental because it transforms like trees and shrubs and unlike stones and rocks. Yet, even this comparison, though nice, is not the true element of what Fanny is referring to. Memory has an “incomprehensible power” and what is the nature of “incomprehensibility”? The qualities that make up incomprehensibility, for Fanny include but surely are not limited to, “the failures, and inequalities of memory than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive so serviceable, so obedient – at others so bewildered and so weak – and at others again, so tyrnnic, so beyond control! – We are to be sure a miracle every way – but our powers of recollection and of forgetting, so seem peculiarly past finding out.” A novel that appears so easily understandable in the themes of marriage and social mobility, is now about memory & reality and memory & creation - that which we remember and the absence of what we do not want to remember.
In my next paper, I would like explore this passage in a larger context of “Pastoral Nature, Memory Construction and Identity Creation as forms of a transcendence that move through Mansfield Park”, as I believe this discussion on memory is tied into a larger but subtle work at play with in this book.
I am creating my own topic of discourse here, not fully thought out but yet still developing through this narrative. In a very loose way – I am working through my own infatuations through this production.
I am centering this discussion around mostly around the concept of memory and to a lesser extent, around the notion of change. I am will be looking at two pages in the novel for this short paper, specific pages 223 and 224. I may bring in a third element into this discussion but I would like to keep it more on the periphery of the explicative, and that is the element of nature - as in pastoral nature.
On page 223, Fanny, while sitting with Mary Crawford, states, “This is pretty - very pretty,’ said Fanny, looking around her as they were thus sitting together one day: “Every time I come into the shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never thought of as any thing, or capable of becoming any thing; and now it is converted into a walk, and it would be difficult to say whether most valuable as a convenience or an ornament; and perhaps in another three years we may be forgetting - almost forgetting what it was before” (223). There are two important issues of note here, first of which relates to the character of Mary Crawford and the second of which is more relevant to what Fanny is suggesting.
At the end of this passage, which contains a very highly analyzed viewpoint of the concept of human memory, we are left with this from the narrator, “Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and Fanny perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought must interest.” Though I should complete Fanny’s narrative here before expounding on Mary’s inability to grasp the beginning or the end of Fanny’s discourse on nature, transformation and memory – we can still summarize Mary Crawford here very easily because she is shrugged off very easily here. Though Mary is presented as having a lively mind or at least a lively personality with some quality of depth, this passage and in this page, Mary’s is presented as anything but a lively mind. As this page pertains to Marry Crawford, it is one of the most damaging and negating portrayals of Mary Crawford and her lively mind. In this one scene, one can possibly forgive Mary for possibly being distracted by thoughts of Edmund and one can also state that Fanny wants to speak about anything but Edmund with Mary Crawford, but, one cannot negate that that this statement, Mary’s untouched nature or inattentiveness when it comes to matters of metaphysical depth, is a recrimination of Mary as it is a vindication of Fanny elevated status in the novel. I hope to show this more as I continue on the larger discussion about memory and creation.
Fanny, uses nature as an entry into a further exploration of the miracle that is memory. Again, in the description of the pastoral nature in which she sits in, she continues, “. . .and perhaps in another there years we may be forgetting - almost forgetting what it was before.” There is a key element of time working here and how it relates with the forgotten and the re-created, which I will not be able to get to here, but it can be seen in other places in the novel, as Edmund asks Fanny to give Harry Crawford time, because things can change, realties, identities and impressions are always under the changing pressure of time. In this scene, the shrubbery has changed and growth has occurred over the passage of time, which is nothing more than a physical outcome of time. It is an outcome of linearity as nothing status static. Thus, through the very simple element of shrubbery, Fanny expounds on elements of truth that are more eternal, more metaphysical and thus more transcendental.
Lets complete the sentence now, “Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never thought of as any thing, or capable of becoming anything; and almost in perhaps, in another three years we may be forgetting - almost forgetting operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!”. In a novel apparently so devoid of the metaphysical element, this passage that stand out even more so because the regular narrative and thematic element is broken with authoritative force. When one completes this sentence, one realizes that Fanny is not talking about nature, she is talking about the art of remembering and forgetting in a supposedly linear time element. The static thus becomes relative through the art of memory and she is talking now about the “operations of time”.
Remembering and forgetting are operations of memory and memory is the nature of time, it is what categorizes our past and what also creates our present. This is something Fanny struggles with later on in the novel with her refusal of Mr. Crawford – there is memory that cannot be forgotten and it is what determines here reality with Mr. Crawford. This element of metaphysical is something she can explain but it is something she, herself cannot exist in, as the shrubbery, later on in the novel. More importantly, she is thus taken out of the natural pastoral and remains stuck in the very thing she can only explain.
Stepping back from this for a moment, one can also see some other aspects that remain very true to the notion of identity. Here, we see that she is also understand that the operations of time, her words, function on what one remembers and what one forgets. In a larger context, for example, if the work is taken as a migrant narrative, what one wants to remember is what one keeps of one’s former identity from a different time period and geographical location. It is part of the migrant process of transformation. Second, if shows how relative notions of inheritance really are, as metaphysical inheritance becomes “an operation of the mind”, a choice if you will given to us by memory, because memory if you will, is what one chooses to remember and what one chooses to forget – inheritance. Third, this in direct relation to transcendence, in that one may rise above the past and thus create a new present or even future, through memory.
In other words like Corrine, or Italy, this passage leaves open the element of choice. You choose to be either Oswald or you choose to be Corrine. Memory is one of direct controls of a present reality and I do not believe Fanny just happened to stumble onto this – I believe Jane Austin’s simple novel about duty and marriage is highly complex novel about the metaphysical nature of identity and reality.
This is further brought out in this passage when one looks at the juxtaposition that is created by Fanny and Marry Crawford. Fanny states, again in the presence of Mary Crawford, as “Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and Fanny perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought must interest.” Fanny takes an elevated status in the passage, as it is her mind that needs to be brought back from this metaphysical state discourses through, to a state that is more easily accessible for Mary Crawford. The narrative is “brought back” to the discourse of the marriage and duty, on purpose, for the benefit of Mary Crawford. Thus, at the very least, can we say the author knows more than what she is leading on to, that the novel stands in moment of transcendence that on purpose brought back for those characters so embedded in what is the community of Mansfield Park.
Fanny or Austin though, is not done;
“;and perhaps in another there years we may be forgetting - almost forgetting what it was before. How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!’ And following the latter train of thought, she soon afterwards added: If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speaking incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is something so retentive: so serviceable, so obedient - at others, so bewildered and so weak - and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! - We are to be sure a miracle every way - but our powers of recollection and of forgetting do seem peculiar past find out.” (And then the next sentence) “Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing say; and Fanny, perceiving it, brought back her own to what she thought must interest.”
Before we move on to Fanny’s passage about memory, I would like to make a slight defense of Miss Crawford but only in relation to the other woman in the book. There are moments where Miss Crawford appears very conscious about all the interacting “games” being played throughout the novel. This makes her seem more enlightened than the other female characters in the novel, but as this passage so poignantly points out, Miss Crawford is presented as nothing more than “spectator” while one of the key passages in the novel is played out. In the spectrum of female characters inside Mansfield Park, Lady Bertram, Mrs. Rushworth, Mrs. Norris, Julia B, Maria B Miss Crawford and Fanny, the spectrum is obviously slanted to one side. If we were to put Fanny on the right side of this spectrum, the left side would be so heavily weighed in density that when a character such as Lady Crawford is looked at, the imbalance created with in the spectrum unduly moves Miss Crawford too much towards Fanny. The left side is so far left, that Miss Crawford actually appears to be more in the middle but only because the left side, with Mrs. Norris, Lady Bertram and the sisters is – so unconscious, so un-metaphysical and so external that Miss Crawford is the next character before Fanny to the right. Miss Crawford does have a conscious awareness of that “desirous mind” – that lively mind and this can be seen in the great leeway that she gives her brother and his dealings with woman throughout the novel. She takes his behavior for granted and without drawing any judgments on him, except in his later interactions with Fanny, this becomes one of her key attributes. However, in her interaction with Fanny here, her apparent lack of interest and insight here makes her look more like a normal knife filled in cupboard with even more dull ones.
In the larger picture, the distance between Fanny and the other characters in the novel, only adds greater weight to Fanny’s discourse and this can be seen through the juxtaposition and distance between these two characters. Fanny describes of memory as one faculty in our nature more “wonderful than the rest”. There is something “speaking incomprehensible about it powers”. One needs to stop here for a moment and realize that this is the few place in the novel, where the thematic elements of the narrative falls out of normal narrative and thematic structure. Its poignancy is through its rarity in the work and along with a few other instances in the novel, leads me to believe that we delve into an almost magical place of “creation” in the novel, a creation that can be seen through two or three passages about nature, the magical suspension of belief in the play almost enacted and passages like the one being analyzed - which deals with the metaphysical element of memory.
Memory in this passage is grounded through nature and thus grounded in reality, the physical, that which is real; trees, shrubs, evergreens and those things that “grow”. Thus, memory is a real element that grows as well, but it is it as organic as the elements it is presented compared to? The answer is both yes and no. It is organic in that it is continues to change, it continues to evolve like the nature it is compared to. Through memory one can become transcendental because it transforms like trees and shrubs and unlike stones and rocks. Yet, even this comparison, though nice, is not the true element of what Fanny is referring to. Memory has an “incomprehensible power” and what is the nature of “incomprehensibility”? The qualities that make up incomprehensibility, for Fanny include but surely are not limited to, “the failures, and inequalities of memory than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive so serviceable, so obedient – at others so bewildered and so weak – and at others again, so tyrnnic, so beyond control! – We are to be sure a miracle every way – but our powers of recollection and of forgetting, so seem peculiarly past finding out.” A novel that appears so easily understandable in the themes of marriage and social mobility, is now about memory & reality and memory & creation - that which we remember and the absence of what we do not want to remember.
In my next paper, I would like explore this passage in a larger context of “Pastoral Nature, Memory Construction and Identity Creation as forms of a transcendence that move through Mansfield Park”, as I believe this discussion on memory is tied into a larger but subtle work at play with in this book.